Loss of Innate Spellcasting (or 'How Dragons Build Lairs')

[Fallen Seraph]

I am just gonna put in a quick thought, but hopefully those with more fluent writing skills can build upon.

I think one major disconnect here is the idea of Race/Class (spellcasters). If we take into consideration that as has been stated by WotC numerous times that sentient-monsters can take classes then the major difference between PCs/NPCs and Monsters is the race itself.

So we have to view it through a racial viewpoint.

Putting aside magic/magical items, dragons have the benefit of:

-Hundreds if not Thousands of years of knowledge.

-Most likely just as old connections with long-lived organizations/creatures.

-Can travel much faster then any human on a horse. (The only PC race I could see being able to travel as fast as a Dragon with natural abilities would be the Eladrin Feywild-travelling (and that could be extremely hard to, or only local).

-Have numerous powerful natural abilities.

-Can spend decades building its home. It is more then slightly hard to reach a Dragon unnoticed if it is perched on a large rock overlooking a underground lake you have to cross to reach it.

-Other Dragons, Dragons while yes solitary most of the time can and do work together. Especially if the Dragon is working with its own young.

-If Dragons can still transform into humans (as a natural ability) then that enables them to do anything a humanoid would be able to.

Humanoids have:

-Large numbers, both in civilian populations and armies.

-Dozens of heroes at the call.

-Fortresses and Keeps secured and built-up over decades.

-Fast breeding.

-Easier to establish contacts with other humanoids.

From this view it seems like Dragons have a very broad and powerful advantage over humanoids. Now, if magic is in the world, and magic items. Then the ability for Dragons to hoard magic items and take spellcasters levels just like Humanoids can simply cancels eachother out.

 

[Propheous_D]

I wouldn't say "even in Eberron". Low level NPCs are a trademark of that setting. In other settings like FR this looks very different.
As for the nonmagical rulers of FR, many of them exist simply "because it fits", not because its logical. When you have Cormyr, a kingdom mostly inspired by Arthurian England a wizard as king wouldn't fit. But all those rulers always have several high level mages close to them which provide them with spellcasting. (Dragons don't have a good access to loyal high level wizards. They depend on wizards who seek them out).

Maybe I was wrong concerning the demographics of traditional D&D worlds, I'll check in the DMG.. Thats also because I prefer worlds where magic is integrated into society and not "tacked on".

I think the major mistake you are making is that you are trying to fit a basic dragon into a high fantasy world. WotC I think realized they made a mistake in making dragons have spell casting right off the bat. This made them have to be balanced under the rules based on thier abilities to cast spells and thus made them weaker then they should have been because of this. Instead they have altered thier philosphy so the dragon is easy to pick up and throw against a group of PC's and if you want him to be a BBEg you can do that with a small addition of the proper abilities and adjusting his CR based on the added abilities.

I think most of us prefer having a base monster that we can easily use in a campaign but with a system that allows us to play with them when we need something a little bit more.

 

[Tzarevitch]

There are actually only some key issues which are important to me.

- Efficient communication
Having a large spy network requires a good communication and without magic this is not possible as it would be very slow and unreliable. Especially when you consider how fast adventurers can move or other nobles can communicate with their agents through magic having to rely on mundane communication is a big disadvantage.

I have news for you. Spy networks existed BEFORE the dawn of satellite communications. They date back to ancient days. Unless we are talking about trully vast distances, your intel does not have to be real time.

If the dragon wants magical communications, it can find a few of those ubiquitous kobold sorcerers that the kobold lairs seem to have so many of.

- Defense
Dragons are always a prime target for adventurers which nearly always employ magic. Without having magic yourself it is very hard or even impossible to defend yourself against them. That doesn't mean the actual combat (the dragon is still quite good at that) but how to prevent the adventurers from intruding your lair.
Another thing is how to keep adventurers or rivaling organizations/nobles from disrupting your spy network or other organization. Disrupting mundane communication is easy and as the dragon can't visit his agents personally it would cripple the entire network.

1. The spells that most dragons had were nowhere near enough to protect them against anything powerful enough to think it could challengethem.
2. Since disabling mundane communcation networks is so easy I assume you will be submitting your plan to disable the communication networks of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, North Korea, Syria, Iran and China ASAP so the CIA can get right on it. I am sure they would be delighted to hear what they have been doing wrong all these years.
3. And yes, the CIA director personally spends time in sunny Iran every summer so he can hear the report of every deep-cover operative. . . personally. Because without that the entire CIA spy network will collapse.

- Secrecy
Without magic there is no defense against diviniations (even with magic that is quite hard) as soon as the influence of the dragon gets too big some people, maybe rivaling nobles will start to gather informations about the agents of the dragon (or whoever the dragon uses to exert his influence) and from there it is easy to follow the trail (especially when you use mundane communication) back to the dragon.

First of all, magic itself if not much of a defense against magic divinations. Most of those blocked scrying results are DM or author fiat. Darkness, inhospitable location and good lair construction are the best defenses.

What sane noble is going to track down a dragon or agents known to work for a dragon? Are you familar with Shadowrun? Google search for "Lofwyr" and tell me that any sane noble or corp exec would harass one of his agents. Note this has nothing to do with his magic, it is beneath him to bother to use magic on you. His organization will simply have someone make you wish you were dead. Exactly like mafia dons and corporate bosses do in the real world . . . without magic.

- Contacts
Face it, most humans will not trust a dragon. Some might do it on a personal level, but on a political scale no one will follow a dragon unless they must do it (at least on large scale politics).
So teh dragon needs minions to represent him. But where does he get this minions? They have to be loyal and must be able to walk freely among humans (or whatever race you want to infiltrate). And as soon as his connection to the dragon gets found out he is useless.

I am not sure why you think humans would trust a dragon less than anything else in a fantasy setting. In Shadowrun one was elected president and many of those are much nastier than D&D dragons.

If a dragon landed in front of you on the way home with $10,000 deposit and offered you a job paying $10,000 per month more simply to act as it investment consultant and spokesman you are saying you wouldn't take it? Even when all it is asking you to do is the same thing ordinary humans pay other humans to do legally?

Tzarevitch

 

[pemerton]

I do think that the question of out of combat capabilities is a reasonable one though, particularly for things like Scrying and Social encounters. Having some means to track your foes down and seek revenge may not be necessary for Dragons, but it is necessary for Villains. It would suck if the ability to use a Dragon as a primary villain in an adventure or campaign were removed simply because there was no way to add such capabilities to a monster that was more balanced than slapping PC levels on top of a monster and trying to work out the CR / XP value. If I want to let my Dragon use some advanced divination, I would like to do so without throwing 13 or so levels of a spell casting class onto it.

It doesn't seem like much of a problem for me.

<snip>

What has been revealed doesn't seem to stop me from giving rituals to any NPC I feel should have them. Or artifacts. Or cults. That is the stuff that would give them the power to be major players in the world, really. They're basically defining ritual as a very extended spell that you need to prepare in order to do anything that affects the campaign world - teleportation, resurrection, etc. They're the one type of magic that it seems you can still learn independent of level (you can learn as many rituals as you can discover, much as a 1-3e wizard could learn all spells for his level) so it would seem to me that if you felt it necessary, you could give them to just about any NPC you want to throw at the PCs.

Excellent point. What is relevant to the creature's power (from the point of view of encounter balancing) is not the way in which it got a certain buff, or added a certain trap to its lair, but simply the final numbers for the encounter (including the extra difficulty that traps or other hazards add).

So if I think a balanced combat encounter with the dragon requires buffs X&Y and trap Z I can simply add these to the encounter, plus add as flavour text: the dragon did those things using its Rituals.

What would make a difference would be that those extra Ritual abilities would potentially constitute extra rewards ("treasure") to be gained by resolving the dragon encounter as a social challenge. This might be a reason to be a little cautious about adding too many such Ritual abilities to the dragon (or to any other NPC).

So I have always balance the off combat abilities of a dragon with its power level? No thanks. I rather have in build spellcasting for dragons which I can use anyway I want. Or at least give the dragon rituals (out of combat spells only).
And I want to have a coherent world. Giving monsters arbitrary powers without explanation doesn't fit my style of DMing.

Saying "Dragons of age X can cast rituals of level Y" would be very good.

I don't see why the absence of a statement like "Dragons of age X can cast rituals of level Y" would make the gameworld incoherent. If you think a given Dragon would benefit from Rituals X, Y and Z then presumably you have a reason for this, and also a view about how Dragons learn this magic. Why wouldn't these together yield sufficient coherence?

But that doesn't require that that the DM gives arbitrary powers to the BBEG. Imo it is more interesting when the BBEG has fixed powers so that the PC can outwith him. When they do the BBEG reacts accordingly but the PCs did score a victory.
Much better than arbitrary saying "the BBEG anticipated it and has ability X as counter" (and you just gave him ability X a few seconds ago).

I don't see what is arbitrary about giving the Dragon the stats/traps etc required and jotting down a note that these derived from Rituals. This has nothing to do with GM "cheating" by changing the combat stats mid-encounter.

 

[Derren]

I don't see why the absence of a statement like "Dragons of age X can cast rituals of level Y" would make the gameworld incoherent. If you think a given Dragon would benefit from Rituals X, Y and Z then presumably you have a reason for this, and also a view about how Dragons learn this magic. Why wouldn't these together yield sufficient coherence?

When you read my other posts you will see that I think that every dragon, in order to behave like they did in previous (including this) edition need magic as it lacks other resources. And to me it is incoherent when a creature lacks a ability which is necessary for its role. Otherwise it leads to very silly things unless houseruled (for example see 3E Mind Flayers. By lore they dominate other creatures to make them their slaves. But they lack any ability to dominate. For me that is incoherent. Same with dragons. They are very often masterminds or at least have trapped lairs and magical wards. But without magic there is no way that they could have placed this wards. So either every dragon has magic or every dragon has minions. In 4E this would both be houserules as dragons are non spellcasting solo encounters.

Another thing. Those who say that dragons casting spells are rare in real life mythology should consider that dragons having minions is even more rare.

I don't see what is arbitrary about giving the Dragon the stats/traps etc required and jotting down a note that these derived from Rituals. This has nothing to do with GM "cheating" by changing the combat stats mid-encounter.

It is arbitrary when the DM does not have any limits on what the dragon has. Say he does set up trapped lairs, spy networks etc. and explains everything with "the dragon has rituals for that". Now the PCs find a loophole. Can the dragon now counteract the loophole with the rituals it has? No matter how the DMs decides it is arbitrary.

 

[The Little Raven]

It is arbitrary when the DM does not have any limits on what the dragon has. Say he does set up trapped lairs, spy networks etc. and explains everything with "the dragon has rituals for that". Now the PCs find a loophole. Can the dragon now counteract the loophole with the rituals it has? No matter how the DMs decides it is arbitrary.

This goes beyond "dragons need spellcaster stats to have lairs/minions" into "should clever players get away with clever things you don't plan for, even if it severely reduces the challenge of an encounter?"

And the answer is yes.

 

[Derren]

This goes beyond "dragons need spellcaster stats to have lairs/minions" into "should clever players get away with clever things you don't plan for, even if it severely reduces the challenge of an encounter?"

Not really. When a dragon has clear rules which "utility" think it can and can't do this question doesn't really come up. When the DM gives the dragon arbitrary powers there is always the question of "wouldn't such a intelligent dragon not also have an ability for this?"

 

[The Little Raven]

Not really. When a dragon has clear rules which "utility" think it can and can't do this question doesn't really come up. When the DM gives the dragon arbitrary powers there is always the question of "wouldn't such a intelligent dragon not also have an ability for this?"

You're not talking about just explaining away the existing traps, lairs, and minions that you've made as part of your encounter as previously-used rituals, you're talking about a DM changing things about the encounter on the fly because their previous plans aren't working out.

 

[Derren]

You're not talking about just explaining away the existing traps, lairs, and minions that you've made as part of your encounter as previously-used rituals, you're talking about a DM changing things about the encounter on the fly because their previous plans aren't working out.

Its not only the DM changing games in mid game which is problematic. Not changing things also is.
With statted out abilities the Dm can look over this abilities and decide if some of those abilities would be useful in this new situation.

When there are no such printed out abilities the DM can either "cheat" or devalue the opponents without knowing if it is appropriate.
No matter what the DM does it is arbitrary and imo problematic.

 

[Lackhand]

Its not only the DM changing games in mid game which is problematic. Not changing things also is.
With statted out abilities the Dm can look over this abilities and decide if some of those abilities would be useful in this new situation.

When there are no such printed out abilities the DM can either "cheat" or devalue the opponents without knowing if it is appropriate.
No matter what the DM does it is arbitrary and imo problematic.

That advice falls strictly under the purview of the "designing an adventure" heading. It has surprisingly little to do with dragons.